Postage metering systems are well known in the art. A typical postage meter applies evidence of postage, commonly referred to as a postal indicia, to an envelope or other mailpiece and accounts for the value of the postage dispensed. As is well known, postage meters include an ascending register, that stores a running total of all postage dispensed by the meter, and a descending register, that holds the remaining amount of postage credited to the meter. The value of the descending register is reduced by the amount of postage dispensed during a transaction. Postage meters generally also include a control sum register which provides a check upon the descending and ascending registers by keeping a running total of all finds that have been added into the meter.
United States postal regulations do not allow postage meters to be owned by the customer that uses the meter, such as an individual or a business. Instead, for security and control purposes, ownership of postage meters must be retained by the meter manufacturer. As a result, postage meters are rented rather than sold by meter manufacturers to customers for a periodic rental fee. Such manufacturers may also rent ancillary or related products, such as a scale, to the customers in conjunction with the meters. Customers are typically billed periodically, such as quarterly, for the rental fees associated with the postage meters and ancillary or related products they have rented. For various reasons, customers often fall behind on their rental fee payment obligations, resulting in past due accounts that are often difficult, inconvenient and/or time consuming to collect upon. Thus, there is a need for a system and method for automating and facilitating the collection of payments for past due rental accounts.
Furthermore, because postage meters hold a finite amount of postage value that is used up over time, they must be periodically refilled or recharged with postal value. Traditionally, in order for a customer to refill or recharge a postage meter, the customer had to physically bring the postage meter to a post office, where it would be manually opened, inspected, refilled, and resealed by an authorized postal employee. More recently, automated systems for remotely (at the owner's location) refilling and inspecting postage meters have been developed and are in widespread use. In one such system, meters are refilled using the telephone system wherein meter related information is communicated by a customer to a remote data center and recharging information is communicated by the data center to the customer using the telephone lines. In another remote recharging system, the postage meter itself communicates electronically, such as with a modem or the like, with a remote data center computer in order to exchange the information required to recharge the meter. In any such remote recharging system, the customer must pay for the postage value before it is loaded into the customer's postage meter. In many instances, customers utilize a credit card for this purpose, and a record of the customer's credit card information is maintained by the provider that operates the remote data center for purposes of charging payments for postage refills. Often times, credit card related problems arise during the recharging process that prevent a customer from recharging their meter. For example, the credit card on file with the provider, which the provider treats as the default method of payment used in the recharging system, may have expired, reached a credit limit or have been suspended due to a lost or stolen card. In such situations, the customer must contact the provider directly, typically by telephone, to provide information for a new credit card to be used for the current transaction and as the future default method of payment. This step is inconvenient and time and resource consuming for both the user and the provider, which must employ staff to receive and act upon such calls. Thus, there is a need for a system for automating and facilitating the updating of credit card information for postage meter customers.